Dart charge, deliberate bug to cause fines?

[supermono]

It might be me making a mistake but twice in two different cars seems unlikely.

1. Crossed and paid a day late (but crucially paid)
2. Crossed a few more times paying on time every time
3. Fine arrives in the post -- but first time offender therefore I can just pay the £2.50
4. Now I've effectively been prepaying all my trips so I don't pay the next one.
5. Fine appears a few weeks later.

Now this exact same thing happened when I was driving my car and also my daughter's car (there was a period I was routinely swapping between hers and mine). I appealed each case and each was rejected because I'd supposedly paid for one too few crossings. Sadly the number and the time passing makes it too much effort for me to unpick the mess.

It seems very odd this happened twice though. I'm pretty thorough about such things normally.

Anyone else had this?

[anonymous-user]

To be honest I think it works well. I only use it maybe 5 times a year but I set up an account and put a fiver on there when it drops to a couple of quid or so. They are good with reminders about the account and send a mail whenever a crossing is made.

[E36GUY]

supermono said:

Anyone else had this?

No. Just set up an automatic account and register all your cars on it. It's very easy.

[S11Steve]

The system is full of flaws, mainly that when you pay for a crossing online it does not ask for a crossing date. In the main this isn't an issue for privately owned vehicles, but has been causing me many headaches with a fleet of rental vehicles.

For example..
A van is hired on a Friday and crosses the bridge without paying. It's returned on the Saturday morning and hired by another customer. That customer goes online and pays for a crossing they make whilst it's on hire. Vehicle is returned on the Monday morning.

A few weeks later, the hire company get a fine for an unpaid crossing, but it's for the saturday crossing. The second hirer has paid for the first crossing, so the hire company provides a copy of the receipt to DART.

Dart refuse the appeal, stating that the payment was for Friday. Fridays hirer says he wont/isn't obliged to pay because the penalty notice is dated after he returned the vehicle. Dart will not release payment information to any party "due to data protection" reasons.

A Charge cert is subsequently issued, and a few months later an Order for Recovery is issued. The OFR is appealed at Northampton TEC with proof of payment on the date the crossing was made, TEC order that the OFR is cancelled and a new PCN issued in order for the appeal to made again...

I have a some vehicles where this is on the 4th cycle of appeals, and Dart will not cancel the original charge. It's been an ongoing issue since the charge started in 2014 - https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/nov/10/char...

It's a fking shambles. And there are dozens of other issues that fleet users are facing - and don't think having a top-up account is a failsafe to avoid penalties.
Around 1.8m penalties have been issued each year by DART so far, from around 40m chargeable crossings. That's a metric stload of revenue by any stretch.

Edited by S11Steve on Tuesday 11th October 11:08

[SVTRick]

Do you not realise its all about raising revenue and they don't give a tinkers cuss how its done.
You now realise why all UK vehicle number plates have to be the correct font and spacing. Naff all to do plod reading them its all the fine revenue
from cameras.

[tigger1]

S11Steve said:

The system is full of flaws, mainly that when you pay for a crossing online it does not ask for a crossing date. In the main this isn't an issue for privately owned vehicles, but has been causing me many headaches with a fleet of rental vehicles.

For example..
<snip>

Have you considered setting up accounts for these vehicles that the company make payments for, and then having it as part of the rental agreement that you will automatically make charges from customers when you get the invoices for DART? Seems like it would be less hassle than the current scenario (notwithstanding that you shouldn't need to because the system should just work, obviously!)

[S11Steve]

tigger1 said:

Have you considered setting up accounts for these vehicles that the company make payments for, and then having it as part of the rental agreement that you will automatically make charges from customers when you get the invoices for DART? Seems like it would be less hassle than the current scenario (notwithstanding that you shouldn't need to because the system should just work, obviously!)

A lot of them are set up that, or at least the ones that are known to be in that area. However the administration of adding and removing 6-7000 vehicles per month onto the system is the big challenge, and the interface provided by Dart/Sanef is far from user friendly.

We also found that when we added a few hundred onto the system and topped up the account, the following day the account was empty - Dart had decided to cover all unpaid crossings and outstanding penalty charges with the account funds. Any vehicles that crossed that day then incurred a penalty, because there wasn't enough funds in the account...

I've had quite a few heated/constructive conversations with the operational management team. Who are a French company and are based in Leeds...